Occasionally, in households with multiple phones on one extension sharing the same phone number, one phone is in use when a new call arrives. The person using the phone is the only one in the household to receive the call-waiting indication and view the calling party caller identity (ID) information. The rest of the phones in the household that are on-hook will remain inactive and will receive and display no incoming call alerts or caller ID information. Broadly defined, an on-hook phone is a phone that is not being used by a user and an off-hook phone is a phone that is being used by a user.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for sending alerts to on-hook Internet Protocol (IP) phones in packet-switched networks, e.g., VoIP networks.